Week 10- Beyond the Brand

I have looked at physical touchpoints within branding previously, Week 6 was based on application such a business card design etc, access Application blog here. Week 10’s lecture was all about taking your brand further and within this lecture that idea was taken a step further and Daniel discussed how we can take our brand beyond and use creative ways to apply our brand.

Examples of this:

• Animation- monogram or wordmark etc.
• Clothing
• NFT’s
• GIF’S
• Supporting app

Looking at brand Values

Daniel explained how these days we are over saturated with brands and they bombard us with products and information and constantly are claiming that they are better than other companies and trying to out do the last trend. The problem with this is that a lot of brands these days are missing out on that emotional connection with their audience and consumers. In order to get that emotional connection you have to believe in the the work you are doing or producing this will reflect on your brands image and attract like minded people who believe in the same thing. As a society we tend to make our decisions based on emotion not fact, therefore this reinforces the idea that making an emotional connection to the consumer is one of the most important parts to branding.

To make that emotional connection between my brand and my consumers I need to tell a story with my brand, I have researched this importance of telling a story in a previous blog post access here. Daniel also mentioned a book that ties into why an emotional connection is so important in branding and it is called ‘The future beyond brand – Lovemarks’ I definitely want to read this book to gain more information on how to do this for my own brand successfully.

 

 

“Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde

Building a strong brand will give users reassurance when they invest in the brand, they are more likely to invest in a brand that they have an emotional connection with and a brand that they can relate to. people prefer to see a brand with character and one were the brand expresses themselves clearly with passion and value for what they do, brands who believe in the work that they do.

During the lecture Daniel talked about a different way to view brand values and how to these 3 different elements add to a brands value. this is a Venn diagram that can help you identify your product’s perceived value and how you can market it.

Brand-

Why people want to use your product?

A brand is the number-one indicator of value for a customer, this is because they develop emotional connections to brands rather than the brands features. That is why a brands image and beliefs are important to a customer and gaining that value and respect, they want a brand that they can connect with on an emotional level.

Experience-

How people experience your product?

So do my customers have a good overall experience when they interact with my brand? Ensuring that all of my social media is up to date and that I have a working and visually appealing portfolio website that they can browse easily will help audience to have a greater experience when interacting with my brand. another aspect is brand merchandise, do I provide items that people would actually want or need in their lives? customer service is an important aspect to a brand experience and something that I need to be sure to remember in the future when interacting with clients. Experience is key to reinforcing users perception of your brand, this is because it connects your product’s and work with the users emotional reaction, and as I have mentioned previously emotional connection is vital.

Product-

What unique way you’ve solved a real user problem?

Product is actually the very last piece to your value proposition, which is surprising to discover. I need to show how I have solved a problem with completing and presenting case studies on my portfolio website. this will therefore show clients how I approach a problem and or task and the steps I complete in order to solve it, and allow them to make an emotional connection to my work in some way.

My goal should be to create a brand that does something unique and special in comparison to my competitors, something that my users and audience can’t help but talk to their friends about. I want my brand to  draw the attention of the audience to my work, and to creates a sense of trust or assurance in the consumer perception of its worth, and therefore convert the customers into brand advocates.

Major task

Daniel set us a task where we had 3 hours to start and or complete a touchpoint for our brand, this touchpoint had to be desirable and something people will like. I want to create a touch point that will give an emotional response and therefore create a better overall user experience for my consumers and will get people excited about my brand!

Mindmap

To start of my project I created a quick mind map of some of my initial ideas of the sort of touch points my brand could make. It is important that I make something that is desirable and will benefit my brands image in a positive way, I need to think about what people actually would like to see from my brand and therefore produce a touchpoint that is actually wanted and desired.

Exploring with animation

I decided to explore animation as I have dabbled with it in the past I wanted to further develop my skills and I felt like task was the perfect opportunity. I decided to work on After Effects, this was my first time using this software and I did find it quite difficult at the start but with practice and a lot of tutorials I felt more comfortable working with this software.

I have decided that I want the animation to occur on my Monogram, my monogram is a loop shape and I wanted an animation to enhance and exaggerate this motion.

The process

I opened up After Effects after watching a few tutorials and I started to play around with the simple motion effects that I felt would suit my type of monogram. I began with some simple animations on my monogram and this got me started with software so I was able to feel more comfortable with using the features within it and I have included my first few tries below.

For this first animation experimentation I added is a simple scaling from 0 and continuing to grow bigger and they align together to form the finished monogram.

For this second animation experimentation I added is a simple scaling from 0 and continuing to grow bigger, however this time I added a simple rotation effect on the G part of the monogram.

To create this third animation I removed the part of the G and set it out to the right and I got it to move in to the left to then connect and align with the rest of the monogram.

What went wrong?

I think that it is important to document when things don’t go according to plan or when you don’t end up with the outcome you hoped for. When I exported these animations I realised that some parts of my monogram were very pixilated and looked blurry, I need to revisit this and understand why and how this happened.  However overall I still got them to animate which I am happy with, however with my first few attempts I didn’t feel happy with the how the actual animation was looking, I wanted it to be more smooth and flow more. So I will revisit this task and with more practice and attempts I will hopefully create the type of monogram animation for my portfolio that best reflects my brands and my values .

Reflection

What did I learn from this weeks lecture?

I learned a lot from this weeks lecture and I enjoyed the content, the focus this weeks was all about connecting with your audience emotionally and this can be a difficult thing to achieve but if done properly a brand will flourish and succeed! This is an aspect that I definitely want to include as I want my brand to come across genuine and sincere and if I inject an emotional connection with my audience and consumers then I will be able to build better and stronger relationships with them.

What did I learn from our major task?

I learned a lot about animation from this major task and I know now know what areas I need to work on within After Effects. I have learned that animation can be a great added element to a brand and can make it look very professional and even more visually appealing. I know that this is something that I want to include in my brand and I need to make sure that I create the right motion and suitable style, this can make or break it. So practice makes perfect so I know I need to keep exploring and experimenting with this software in order to improve and to get the right animation for my brand.